Lake Hillier, WA       Picture The Guardian

It’s a little more like winter, but I haven’t been tempted to wear anything warmer than my T-shirt yet. Lovely 20deg days with a bit o’ rain and a bit o’ sun. Nice.

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More WA shots…

Albany, WA. Calm waters, or ocean surf, take your pick.

Off Coogee Beach.

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This is a shot of a right-wing anti-vaccination/Covid-19-is-a-hoax demonstration in Sydney last week. Funny lookin’ star on the flag, yeah? It’s missing a point. This is the six point Jewish star. Seems to me, THIS IS A PSYCHO OP. Anyway, since when does our flag have a red background?

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How about this?

You received this message because you are a registered member of Meetup. You cannot unsubscribe from Meetup emails that provide important updates about Meetup’s policies. Please visit your account settings to adjust all other email settings.

What?? You cannot unsubscribe? I don’t even know what this Meetup mob is. I don’t remember joining it and I don’t want their emails.

OK, I’ve had a look at their website and I vaguely remember something about it but I don’t remember how I joined, I haven’t done anything with them, and I can’t find any way to unsubscribe and disengage. Crazy.

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Things are getting back to normal. I went to the Clarkson shopping centre on Friday and the cafes and food hall are open again. I didn’t actually eat there because I’ve developed different habits now – I skip lunch, mostly, so I don’t need to eat in the afternoon.

However, despite only having two meals a day, and small meals at that, my weight stays stubbornly at the same level. I eat much less than I used to 20 years ago, but I weigh more and I can’t get it off. It’s because I’m less mobile, I know. Sigh.

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People complain that it’s hard to find work. I put an ad up on NextDoor, the neighbourhood website, looking for a young person to clean and polish my cars for payment. Answers? Nothing. So what are young people complaining about?

I also just answered a Facebook ad for car radio installations, telling the guy what I wanted done. He immediately said no, didn’t want the work. Phut!

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Dull day today. Not much happening I’m afraid, sorry.

Taken with a 400mm lens, Bali 2017  ©  PJ Croft 2020

We’re only 11 days away from midwinter, 21 June, and it’s still 24deg, a bit cloudy but plenty of blue sky and sun. Merveilleux. Big rain forecast for tomorrow and Friday, though.

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I used a French word there, not that I speak French, I don’t but I like to put on a faux act 🙂

I must comment on the ABC’s Sunday night program (I can’t even remember the name! Operation Buffalo, that’s it). It’s obviously big budget with big stars but it’s so ridiculous it’s almost parody to me. There’s a supposed British army general who is supervising the British atomic weapon tests at Maralinga in the early 1960s and when he is taken out into the desert (at night, in his scarlet dress uniform with medals!) to see Aborigines, he tries to speak to them in French! “Parlez vous Francaise?” His nick name is Cranky. I think Wanker would be more appropriate. The three Aborigines are sitting around a roaring, blazing camp fire, dressed in what seem to be clean clothes straight from Coles. It’s ludicrous. This program doesn’t seem to know whether it wants to be serious historical documentary or comedy. The acting is awful, the script is atrocious. I’ll watch the remaining episodes but….

It’s not a patch on the program in the weeks before, Mystery Road. That was absolutely superb. It’s set in Broome, which is fictionalised as Gideon, and stars Aaron Pederson. He is fantastic. He has almost no facial expressions but he doesn’t need to, he conveys menace and determination as a good cop tracking down drug dealers up there. Broome looks nice although you don’t see much of it. Lots of side stories which are hard to follow at times, but I would watch it again. Recommended.

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I wrote (ranted!) last week about the Robodebt scheme, where the Department of Human Services (aka Centrelink) levied unwarranted debts against the poorest, weakest members of society, and were found to have been acting illegally. They are having to refund hundreds of thousands of those illegal debts amounting to an estimated $710 million.

That was last week. Now the figure has been revised and guess what – it’s doubled to around $1.5 billion! That’s $1.5 billion that has been ripped off the weakest, poorest, disabled members of society, money that could have been spent on food, medicines, car repairs, household services and all the other things that keep society going.

Once again, the minister responsible, Stuart Robert, is making no comment and definitely no apology. It’s despicable!!

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Everyone who knows me thinks I buy cameras at the drop of a memory card, but the fact is that the last time I bought a camera was 2016. I admit I have a lot of cameras, in fact to jog my memory I’ve just started a database to list them with serial numbers, and I have nine digital cameras. Oh, ten if you count the very first one from 2004 which is in a box stored away. And one dates from 2008.

Anyway, all this is leading up to saying that I haven’t been very excited by photography for a while, and so I’ve made the jump to a new camera which I’ve been eyeing for a while and which I hope will get me going again.

Nikon P950

What’s exciting about it? The lens. It starts at 24mm at the wide end but it zooms to 2000mm! That’s like a telescope. Normally that would be mandatory tripod territory, but the image stabilisation is so effective that it’s fully usable hand held, they say. It’s tested here Nikon-Coolpix-P950-review with a big sample gallery, and the sharpness and quality from a fairly small sensor are just remarkable.

Fully zoomed. It’s a physically big camera but not too heavy.

The tests show incredibly good detail, even zoomed right in, although atmospheric pollution in the tester’s location (Seattle USA) reduces contrast. In our clear air it should be fine although heat haze will always be a problem here in our warm weather.

But that’s not all. It shoots RAW (i.e. digital “negatives”) and video at up to 4K (3840 x 2160 pixels) at 30/25fps progressive (non-interlaced). That’s remarkable.

I haven’t got it yet. I bought from an eBay store which says their stock is in Sydney, but I got an order confirmation email which implied that it may have to come from Hong Kong. End of the month, anyway.

So, my first new camera in nearly five years. Yah!

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My West Indian lime tree is now producing limes much faster than I can use them. I’ve got a bag of halves in the freezer for drinks, but I have another dozen or more on the bench. I’ll have to juice them. Picking them is a dangerous job. The spines on the branches are deadly. I have to use a long-arm squeeze-handle picker-upper.

I read a few weeks ago that you shouldn’t wait for fruit to fall, you should pick it off the tree because by the time it falls, fruit fly can get to it. OK.

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I had a Facebook message today from my very nice Bali friend from last year, Kasih, asking when I’ll be coming back to Bali. I had to reply, sorry, no can do. First, we’re not allowed to travel outside Australia at the moment, but mainly because I can’t risk it. I’m in the highly vulnerable category for Covid-19 and I could never feel relaxed about being in Bali, even if I could go. I would be too nervous. Any cough or symptom would have me on edge. Sorry, I can’t see any way I would go until we can be sure that either we have an effective vaccine, or sure that the virus has been eliminated. Neither seems likely this year and probably not next year either.

My friend thinks she’ll go back there later this year. I think this is wishful thinking. Even assuming air travel is allowed then, it’s still too dangerous. Indonesia doesn’t test properly and under-reports its cases, making it appear safe when it’s not. An Aussie died of the virus there last week. He must have been a resident I’d say. That shows that it’s still a hotspot.

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Aaaah, beautiful sunshine. Time to get my washing off the line before tonight’s and tomorrow’s rain.

One of my former colleagues has posted on Facebook about the great times during the Americas Cup defence in Fremantle in 1986/87. These are a couple of my pics from that time.

Americas Cup Fremantle 1987  © PJ Croft 2020

There were three Kookaburras, did you know?  ©  PJ Croft 2020

I’ve had to remove the slide show because it was taking too much space.

Ely Cathedral  2008  © PJ Croft 2020

Another byoot day, 24.4deg and virtually no wind. Lovely.

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    It defies belief, how nasty, awful, horrible donald trump is. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, also a former chief of defence staff, in other words pretty well qualified, has said what everyone knows, that trump is not qualified to be president and he won’t be voting for him in November. And Powell is a Republican.

So what does trump do? He acts exactly like a child. “Oooh, he said nasty things about me so I’m going to say nasty things about him.” This idiot just attacks anyone who criticises him, just like a schoolboy in the yard. He’s a child!

Yet the Republican Party, that venerable US political party of old, usually referred to as the GOP which stands for Grand Old Party (it took me years to work that out in the days before the internet), sits back and stays silent. They don’t care how bad their candidate’s performance is, all they care about is being re-elected in November.

How can nearly half of Americans support this clown? His performance in office just gets worse and worse, week by week, yet nothing shakes their faith in him.

It’s long been my belief that support for the liberal, progressive side of politics (that’s small l, not Liberal) is directly related to intelligence. The more intelligent you are, the more likely you will support progressive parties and policies. Conversely, the less intelligent, the more likely you are to support the conservative side, the less progressive, the ones who oppose change. In fact if you look at the bell curve of IQ, I’ll bet that voting intentions line up with conservative voters on the left, low IQ side, and the progressive voters will occupy the right, high IQ side. I’ll do some research on this, I think.

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Paris 2008    © PJ Croft 2020

I’ve spent a lot of time working with a new program I’ve found to build a web site. I suppose it’s a bit surprising that I’ve never had my own web site and to be honest it’s because I’ve never known how to do it. I’m not bad with most software but I don’t know everything and web sites have always been a mystery to me.

Anyway, this new software (new to me) is called Wix, http://www.wix.com. It’s an Israeli company and it’s all drag and drop, no coding needed. It’s free if you have your own domain (hosting site) but they’ll host it for you for a basic cost of US$10 per month, or more realistically US$14 per month for a few extras.

It looks quite good with lots of templates to choose from, and it’s fairly easy so far, but it doesn’t take long to get bogged down. I started trying to build folders of my images but I seem to be endlessly changing things to the way I want them, then finding it doesn’t look right and having to lose the work I’ve done, then doing it again and so on. No doubt a teenager could do it in his sleep, but I’m not sure it’s the software for me. I’ll post progress if it happens.

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Nottingham, UK.  ©  PJ Croft 2020

I’m using a lot of software from a UK company called Serif these days. They’re based in Nottingham. Serif of Nottingham, geddit?

They used to sell fairly mid-range software but a few years ago they decided to go big time and compete with Abobe, the US 500Kg gorilla that produces Adobe Photoshop which they only rent for a monthly fee. In other words you go on paying and paying.

So Serif have produced three main programs under their Affinity brand, — Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer and Affinity Publisher. Unlike Adobe, you can buy the software for a very reasonable once-off price (usually A$50 approx.) and it’s yours to use as long as you want. You get upgrades within versions but if you are happy to stay, that’s all you pay.

I’ve bought all three programs and the Designer was half price during the lockdown period, about $25. Bargain! Recommended.

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I do actually have a website – it’s this one. Although the host is WordPress.com, I pay $30 per year for my own domain name which is http://www.bullsroar.me  The “.me” means “me, myself, I” if you follow me. But I can’t display my images except in-line and I want to do more than that.

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Having got rid of that old Sony TV, I’ve been doing some tidying up in that room and bingo, I’ve found something that I’ve been looking for for more than a year. It’s a JVC car radio that I bought in 2012, a double-DIN Bluetooth unit, AM/FM and CD of course. I wanted to put it into the Magna before I sold it, but damned if I could find it. I found it in a box that was hidden below other stuff.

Now, what to do with it? I have a nice Kenwood DAB+ radio/CD/USB/Bluetooth in the cupboard as well. In the Honda I have a JVC double-DIN touch screen AV unit, plus the original Honda 6 disc CD changer that I took out.

The Mazda has a Sony Bluetooth/USB/phone single DIN that was in the car, so that’s OK. (But I can’t get it out of demo mode!)

In the Verada I have the original Mitsubishi 6 disc changer in the dash, but there’s a disc inside and I can’t get it to eject. I have a “new” second hand JVC DAB+ A/V double-DIN touch screen unit which I want to install.

So, got that? That makes a total of five, or is it six, between three cars. Ridiculous. If I could only get started.

Trigg Beach 2004 from yesterday.

Trigg Beach, same as yesterday but July 1975, 45 years earlier.  © PJ Croft 2020

Perth skyline June 1988. Not many tall buildings.  © PJ Croft 2020

Perth Station from Forrest Place 1976   ©  PJ Croft 2020

Palace Hotel before the Bond erection  1980   © PJ Croft 2020

Barque Endeavour July 1988   © PJ Croft 2020

Just a few of many hundreds of my photos which are getting a bit historic now. A bloke should publish a book, I suppose.

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It’s been suggested that I’m wasting my breath, getting upset for no purpose after my venting about Robodebt yesterday. OK, let me quote a few relevant phrases:

All that is required for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.  (Burke)

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.  (Niemöller)

The only wrong thing to say is to say nothing.   (Meghan Markle)

These were said in vastly different contexts but they still have application to this evil government’s depredations on the weakest members of society. The view of the Liberal Party is that the best way forward is for government to get out of the way of entrepreneurs and businessmen (and women) so that they will build businesses and the wealth generated will trickle down in the form of better wages.

The problem with this idea is that no matter how you fiddle the figures, the wealth does NOT trickle down. The money is staying at the top. CEO and senior executive salaries have skyrocketed but wages have stayed stagnant. The gap between rich and poor is growing faster than at any time in history. The multiple between shop floor wages and top executive salaries since the 1950s has grown from about 10:1 to 300:1 or more. It’s not just in other countries, it’s happening in this country too.

The other Liberal Party attitude is that if people are poor, it’s their own fault. They should just get a good job! That’s an actual quote of this party a few years ago (Joe Hockey, then treasurer, now ambassador to the USA). Just go out and get a good job, that’s all you need to do to get on.

The problem is, good jobs are becoming scarcer, automation is taking jobs, both skilled and unskilled, wages are at their lowest level of growth since the 1930s, wage theft by employers is now endemic, training opportunities and apprenticeships have been ruthlessly cut for a decade, TAFE has been gutted and university is now almost unaffordable.

So if you’re one of the thousands who can’t get training or experience and can’t get a job, you are forced onto welfare and a payment which is about 50% below the poverty line.

And that’s where the next nasty Liberal Party philosophy cuts in – if you’re on welfare, you’re probably going to cheat. So they devised this Robodebt scheme of looking at tax records, making assumptions without evidence, then sending letters without warning accusing people of cheating and demanding they repay a supposed debt. This is a debt that in most cases doesn’t exist. They, Centrelink, don’t have to prove it, you have to prove you don’t owe the money.

So the next step is the debt collectors. Documentation of a suicide due to Robodebt

One death is one too many and there were many more. That’s why I will speak out in my own small way. I’m not going to stay silent while evil flourishes.

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More quotes from an article in The Monthly today:  One robodebt victim, blogger Andie Fox, wrote about her own difficulties with Centrelink as well as a private debt collector, and had her personal Centrelink records “mistakenly” sent from Minister Alan Tudge’s office to a Fairfax journalist, who then wrote an article questioning the validity of Fox’s claims.

Debts were raised against the dead, the intellectually disabled and the homeless. All the way into 2019, in fact, the Morrison government was still contemplating an expansion of the robodebt dragnet. The whole grotesque scheme was always, quite obviously, an ideological exercise: an attempt to blame the structural problems of a capitalist economy upon the poor.

I can’t write any more today – I feel sick.

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Yes I can. Here’s an article from 2016:

Human Services Minister Alan Tudge told A Current Affair last week that people who owed debts to Centrelink could end up in jail, but the government’s new automated computer system chasing welfare debts makes a basic mistake that is leading people to believe they have been unfairly targeted.

“We’ll find you, we’ll track you down and you will have to repay those debts and you may end up in prison,” Tudge told the program. The government says it is chasing up $4 billion in welfare debts through a new automated system that matches people’s income declared to the Tax Office with their income declared to Centrelink over the same financial year.

Minister for Human Services. What’s human about that? Threats of prison! For debts! What’s next, transportation to the UK on prison ships?

My old beach – Trigg.   (Trigg Island is there – see that low rocky thing in centre distance?)  © PJ Croft 2020.  Oh, I had some great swims there with my dogs from 2000 to 2013. I miss it!

I boil with suppressed rage when I read about this evil Liberal-National coalition government’s unlawful (i.e. illegal) Robodebt scheme. For those who don’t know Australian politics, it was a scheme hatched about four or five years ago based on their belief that there was widespread fraud occurring by people on welfare, true or not.

The government touted it as cracking down on dishonesty about reporting income to the welfare agency Centrelink, and it was said to be raising nearly a billion dollars in wrongly received welfare payments.

They did this by looking at the declared income received by clients, then, even if this was intermittent income received from part time work, or income received for only part of a year due to losing a job, or part of a year due to falling ill, then assuming that this rate of income applied for a whole year. This was called “income averaging”.

If you were targeted, the first you would know about it was when you received a letter saying you had to repay Centrelink $X – which could be thousands or tens of thousands of dollars and usually was.

The people who received these demanding letters were the same people who depended on welfare for any number of reasons, especially sickness, mental illness, physical disabilities, family breakup and domestic violence and so on. The common thread is that they are, almost by definition, on the bones of their arse, with no savings, dependent on those welfare payments. Can you imagine the shock at opening that envelope telling you you owe thousands or tens of thousands of dollars? Especially as it contained implied threats that legal action would be taken, and not just that, the department would be garnisheeing your bank account or your tax refund to retrieve this money. And they did it!

The result was that several people, at the very least, were driven to suicide. Probably more.

“Pursuing robodebt was the signature policy of Taskforce Integrity. The name says it all: a taskforce created to deal with those who lack integrity. Stuart Robert launched the initiative with this claim: “You are not just cheating and stealing from the government; you are stealing from your neighbour; you are stealing from those genuinely in need.” This is the same guy who is notorious for trying to make dodgy claims himself! Who eventually repaid $38,000 in taxpayer money for “residential internet costs.” ” (The Guardian 4/6/20) If it was all above board, why did he repay it?

Yes, the Honourable Stuart Robert MHR, Minister of the Crown for Social Security. The same guy who:

• used a taxpayer funded trip to China to transact business for a company he was involved in;
• while he was assistant treasurer, joined a company whose founder-director had a rape conviction;
• drew intense criticism for an exorbitant internet bill, which he charged to taxpayers at a rate of $2,000 per month. Robert blamed “connectivity issues” at his home and has since paid back the money. He repaid more than $35,000;
• he quit the front bench in 2016, after an internal investigation found he had shares in a trust linked to the mining company of a Liberal donor;

These are just a few of the reports and allegations of dodgy dealings by this guy. Just Google “Stuart Robert wrongdoing”. Yet he was put in charge of persecuting low income, sick or disabled people on welfare.

“The messaging in official statements, echoed by staff in Centrelink offices and call centres, encourages clients to feel worthlessness, anger, embarrassment and humiliation. All of this for $282.85 a week (pre-Covid-19), while the national poverty line was $457 per week. Anyone receiving support already knew that the Department of Human Services wanted them to feel bad about it, and robodebt doubled down on the notion that we were guilty in fiscal terms as well.” (The Guardian 4/6/20)

It’s not going too far to say that the government, through Centrelink, was “putting the frighteners” on vulnerable people.

As if this were not enough, trying to contact Centrelink was a world of pain. If you tried to phone it was almost impossible to talk to anyone. You were either on hold for two hours or more, or you were passed from person to person, answering difficult questions requiring access to documents.

The effect was that Centrelink didn’t have to prove you owed a debt, you had to prove that you didn’t owe anything!

Now a class action in the courts has finally found that this method of income averaging was unlawful. The distinction between unlawful and illegal is a bit arcane but unlawful means against civil law but not amounting to criminality. Huh.

So the government has to repay around $710m to tens of thousands of welfare recipients who were effectively frightened into repaying this money. But they will not apologise, saying that because it’s before the courts, they can’t.

Who was the instigator of this savage, cruel scheme? None other than our Bible thumping Christian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who likes to think of himself as a man of the people. His henchman was the current attorney general Christian Porter, my local member. He’s a member of the hard right of the Liberal Party, an acolyte of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), a hard right wing group who believe the ABC should be privatised, who advocate a flat tax of 30% on everyone, no matter what your income and other rabidly crazy ideas.

Perhaps you sense my disgust!

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“Australians lead the world in panic buying in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, according to new research that has analysed Google searches, including those for toilet paper and supermarket opening hours.”

Yeah, well, we Aussies are the best in the world at a lot o’ things, so being world’s best at panic buying fits, doesn’t it?

In fact, I hear we’re sending a team of panic buyers to the Olympics next year. It will include competitors in the “Most rolls of dunny paper in a trolley event”. Gold, for sure.

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I’ve done a long drive on the Mitchell Freeway today, from here to Osborne Park and back, about 50Km all up. Thank goodness the roadworks are finished around Karrinyup Rd, Hutton St and on into the city. I was so sick of negotiating cones and temporary lanes for a year or more.

Has the standard of driving improved after all the talk about how this virus has led to a “reset”. Maybe a bit, but I was still being tailgated and the hoons in their black Commodore utes were still weaving between lanes, trying to gain a few cars’ advantage. Grrrr.

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I took the opportunity to do a car wash and boy, the MX6 comes up well. The paintwork is in very good condition. I’ll do a good polish and it should be ready to advertise to sell. It’s a nice car but I’ve had my fun. I’m too fat for it.

Same with the Honda – I don’t need it, it’s too big. It’s for sale.

He who hesitates… I said this car was a good buy and someone else thought that too, because it’s been sold. Damn. That was a very fast sale because these cars are slow sellers. I’ve seen one stay on sale for two years and as far as I know it still hasn’t sold. There must be some problem with it. Oh well, it would have been a stretch too far for me, I think.

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Phew, if this is winter, let it continue. A beautiful warm 25deg day and the next week is forecast as an almost unbroken string of 22-23deg days and sunshine. I’m sure winter will arrive, but it’s not here yet.

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I’ve been saved from another, perhaps silly, purchase today. Aldi advertised an 8″ throat bandsaw for $129. This is a relatively small machine but ideal for model work. I wanted it, but knew I don’t really need it. Consequently I delayed going to Aldi today until about 3pm and by then their stock had been sold. Oh well, again it wasn’t to be and I’ve been saved.

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The gullible British public voted to leave the EU four years ago, then a few months ago they voted for that liar and con man Boris Johnson (actually only 43.5% voted for the Tories, 56% didn’t want the Conservatives. Yet such is the stupidity of first past the post voting).

Well, you stupid Poms, you bear the cost of more than 52,000 COVID-19 deaths to date. If you voted Tory, you are responsible for this grossly excessive death toll. The UK is one of the worst affected countries in the world, and why? There’s no special reason. How is it that Germany, with a far greater population and borders with several countries has a far lower death toll?

The reason is very poor leadership by Boris and his Tory henchmen. Poor decision making, mistakes, failure to test and trace, and they aren’t even counting all the deaths in their aged care homes!

If you voted Tory in the UK, you carry a share of the blame for this horrific death toll in Britain. Fools.

Bangkok 1988   © PJ Croft 2020

Wow, the days are adding up. Day77! I must admit things are getting a bit boring. There’s no lack of things to do, it’s just getting moving is the hard bit.

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Ever since I bought my LG 55″ OLED TV around 2017 (?), my old Sony 32″ LCD has sat forlornly on a table in a spare bedroom while I tried to decide what to do with it. It was basically worthless. Even though it was a Full HD Sony Bravia, no-one wanted it when I  tried to give it away. Only 32″? Nah. I thought I might bring it into this computer room, but that would have required drilling lots of holes in the wall for the mounting arm and I don’t really want to.

Anyway, browsing Facebook Marketplace on Wednesday night a woman was asking if anyone could donate a TV as she is out of work, has three kids and is kinda house-bound. Bingo. So I replied and she came here on Thursday morning to collect it. She was very grateful and I was happy to see it go to a good cause, so all’s well. Now I have some space again.

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If you could see my place, it’s like a workshop inside. I went a bit overboard in my orders from the Chinese website Wish and I’ve got hundreds of electronic components, connectors, small power supplies, small voltage regulators and controllers and so on. The idea was (and still is) that these would be for my model railway, when I build it.

But the space I had for the railway base boards is now taken up by the boxes of parts!

I’m stuck on the model railway. I’ve got a design worked out but I’m short of the electronics to drive the locos. I’m finding that DCC (Digital Command Control) is a bloody sight harder than it looks. In the old days, building up a couple of analogue controllers was not hard – I did it back in the ’80s.

But DCC, although it’s a brilliant idea, is fiendishly complicated. Cabs, throttles, boosters, decoders, data connections, computer interfaces, weird terminology, it’s not easy. It’s not too bad if you’ve got plenty of money and can buy a ready made system, but you’re looking at ~$1,000. That’s on top of the $1,000 I’ve already spent (over six years) on the track, points, a few locos and a dozen carriages and wagons.

Whether I’ll do this, clear the decks, spend quite a bit more money and make a start on what’s really a multi-year project is questionable.

I’ve actually built the PC boards for two boosters from a Silicon Chip design but they have to be put into a housing and provided with power yet.

In January this year, they published a new design for a controller and booster in one, and I was really looking forward to building it. But disappointment! It’s Arduino based, which I know nothing about, and in the description they say “…. we assume you are familiar with the Arduino Design Environment.” Er, no. Not at all! Fair go.

I’ve read the article several times and I can’t work out how to start. There’s no housing, no knobs, they just say you control it from your computer. Huh? There’s no detail. There’s no kit of parts available – I’ve checked with Jaycar and they’re no help, they don’t even seem to know about it. Phhhtt.

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The chaos in the USA at the moment, and the awful, terrible lack of leadership of the Dump is hard to watch. As the commentary says, this is not an isolated incident, this is the result of hundreds of years of ingrained racism, white supremacism, coming back to bite them.

What gets me is the savagery of the police. They are out of control, and since they are being supplied with surplus deadly weapons from the military, they feel they have the right to use them. Considering the number of people who own firearms in the US, more weapons than there are people, the potential is there for a civil war.

I’ve had the view for some time that nothing will change there without a revolution and it’s looking more and more possible.

And when even the president is taking the white supremacist side and suggesting that the armed forces could be released on the civilian population, it’s not looking hopeful. Just like the Soviet Union, the USA could well collapse from within.

And all this is happening in the middle of a pandemic! It’s quite unsettling. Quite honestly, I hope Donald Trump catches the Corona virus and dies. He does not deserve his place on this Earth.

Americas Cup 1986, Fremantle WA. Australia IV heads out for racing.  © PJ Croft  This was Alan Bond’s competitor, but they were beaten in the trials by Kookaburra, which went on to lose to Dennis Connor’s USA entry to take the cup back to NY.

Aaaah, a lovely wet day. If you’re from a rainy location (e.g. New Zealand, Oregon, Norway…) you probably won’t understand my obsession with rain, but it’s very dry here in Western Australia and we need all the rain we can get. All we usually get is showers rather than steady rain that fills dams.

I remember the winters from the 1950s through to 1977, when it all changed. We used to get days when it rained all day, enough to soak the soil in the hills enough for runoff to fill the big dams to overflowing their spillways. It usually rated a picture in the newspaper each year. But it all changed in 1977, the wind patterns shifted and we don’t get those very wet winters any more. It’s serious dryness, such that we’ve had to build two very expensive seawater desalinators. The dams only fill to about 30%.

So a really wet day like today brings back feelings and memories. Good memories.

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I don’t usually involve myself too much in Aboriginal matters. I’m not racist, it’s just not in my priorities, not of great interest.

But British mining company Rio Tinto’s actions have got me riled!

There’s a pair of caves in the Pilbara region of WA which are within one of Rio Tinto’s mining tenements. They were negotiating with the Aboriginal groups with ties to the area over which areas Rio Tinto could mine and any areas they couldn’t.

Apparently Rio Tinto got permission in 2013 to mine the area where these caves are. But after that date, significant new finds of artifacts were found in the caves dating them back 46,000 years, including cave paintings, bones and hair. The Aboriginal groups changed their minds about letting R/T mine the caves.

But last week or last month Rio Tinto just went ahead and dynamited these caves, destroying these 46,000 year old relics. Even though they knew of their significance, the law allowed them to mine the area, so they just went ahead and blew them up.

I find this incomprehensible. Surely someone doing the job must have said, “Hang on, this can’t be right.” Why didn’t someone in the company call a halt to the destruction? Was there some pressure from above to make the destruction happen?

Rio Tinto have been asked to comment on radio and TV programs but they won’t talk apart from offering an apology.

Bit late! Those 46,000 years of archeological history are gone forever now. It’s been compared with the Taliban’s deliberate destruction of the statues in Afghanistan and the ISIS destruction of ancient temples in Syria – wanton vandalism.

Rio Tinto is a British company. They stand condemned in my eyes. They should be resisted from now on.

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It”s hard to feel endangered in this virus pandemic now. I only go out once or twice a week and I wear rubber gloves and use sanitiser, but that’s all. I don’t feel nervous. We’re still getting cases of infection in WA but they’re all from known sources, either people returning from overseas (how do they get permission to enter the country?) or in the latest cases, seamen from a ship that was allowed to enter Fremantle port and tie up.

But it’s hard to feel endangered just walking in the shopping centres. We still can’t sit down in the food hall or cafes, but that’s OK. I do admit I’m missing the meets with friends I used to have. Chatting by email doesn’t feel the same.

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I have 1TB of “Cloud” data storage provided by ASUS, which I’ve been using a bit. Yesterday I got an email from them:

All clear?

To be fair, I’ve had another email just now in English telling me to upgrade the software, so I assume it’s the same thing.  I was finding that although I’m copying a folder with many sub-folders, many of the sub-folders were empty when I checked on the cloud server. I’ve had to redo the copying several times, which seems to work, but it’s a slow process.

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I complained on-line to iiNet, my ISP, early this week about having a 250GB monthly limit and that Telstra seems to be upgrading their customers from 25Mb/s to 50Mb/s free of charge. Why can’t iiNet reward my >7 year loyalty and do that for me?

I’ve just had a phone call from them to talk about it, a very quiet line with a full 2 sec satellite delay so it made the call very difficult. First it was from a guy in South Africa who hummed and hahed and didn’t seem to have any authority. He passed me over to a woman in Manila who apologised for the sound of the rain, which made me think she was in Perth at first, as it was raining here too. Same low volume, though.

Anyway, same thing – she’s passing on my details to a manager who will assess me, and apparently there’s a Seniors Plan but it depends on your address. Huh? Why? No answer to that. Please wait 24-48 hours and we’ll get back to you. They sent me an email asking me to do a survey so I marked them down 6/10 saying I don’t feel I got any great result, so far anyway.

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Ah, blue sky, I need to go to the shops. Maybe I’ll be able to sit down for a coffee? I do miss that.

Yosemite National Park, California 1988. © PJ Croft 2020  Due to the prohibition on visitors at the moment, wild animals, bears, deer, buffaloes and so on are roaming freely in the park.

Whoa, missed six days. Nothing wrong, just forgetful.

Lots of lovely rain this morning but the sun’s out now from a blue sky. Beautiful. I still had a cold shower this morning – I’ve never done this in winter before, I just like it. It’s like drinking nice cold water from the fridge, it refreshes your mouth and the whole body. I’m hooked on cold water. I think it’s good for me too.

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I’ve finally given my old 32″ Sony Bravia LCD TV to a good home. A woman asked on Facebook Marketplace last night if anyone had a free TV they don’t want, so I replied and the deal was done. She came here and collected it a couple of hours ago and was very grateful. I said I’m happy if it goes to someone who needs it. She said she’s on the Jobseeker allowance and has three kids and no spare money. At the end she offered a hug and before I knew it, social distancing was forgotten and I hugged. Nice.

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Suddenly, that one act allowed me to fold up a folding table and free up space in that bedroom at last. It was too cluttered to use. Dog, I am afflicted by clutter! I keep bringing “stuff” into the house and not getting rid of “stuff” that’s no longer wanted and, in the reverse of Marie Kondo’s phrase, doesn’t “bring joy”. Must try harder. Three cars! What am I doing? Madness.

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One thing I’m doing is that I’ve finally, after years of inertia, changed the destination bank account for my pension. Yesterday was the first day and I was nervous that it might go wrong, but it worked.

I always thought I’d have to do it by phoning Centrelink and I was too nervous to do it. Nervous about having to answer questions and maybe drawing attention to myself. Not that I’ve done anything wrong, not at all. I finally did it by accessing the MyGov website and changing the destination account on-line.

Anyway, now that I’ve stopped it going to my 0.01% interest Commonwealth Bank Robbery account, I can close that down and I’ll almost be free of that unethical, dishonest bank. Unfortunately, I was too slow and didn’t realise that the Visa “annual fee” was due a week ago, so I’ve been charged $129 to that account when I no longer want it. Bugger.

My other bank told me a few years ago to reconsider about closing that Visa card, because banks don’t like giving credit cards to people like me with minimal income. So maybe it’s better if I just hold onto that one account with them, for this year anyway. I rarely use it, I have a Visa card with my “better, ethical” bank – it’s just for backup mainly when I’m travelling. Won’t be doing much of that for a while.

The other bank is P&N Bank, by the way. I’ve been with them for about 15 years and never had any complaint. Especially as this year they abolished all fees, such as “account keeping” fees and “loan establishment” fees. I’m impressed.

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2003 Mercedes CL500.  Even though it looks black, they say it’s blue.

Dammit, once I saw this yesterday, I can’t get it out of my mind. It’s for sale from a dealer in Adelaide. I’ve lusted after one of these for the past few years but I’d decided against it. But this one is a model year 2004 and has only done 42,000Km. That’s excellent. Add to that, it’s Tanzanite Blue (very dark blue), not black as they nearly all are, and look at the interior!

Look at that beautiful leather.

One owner, a lady. Yeah, right, but it looks the part.

Aaaarrrrgh. I love it. I want it. Even if it won’t fit lengthways in my garage. I’d have to park it diagonally, which means my other cars have to go, NOW. Make me an offer.

Of course, the travel restrictions mean I can’t go to Adelaide at the moment, so it will have to remain a dream for a while. I’ll get over it. Oh, price you ask?  $34K. No, I don’t have that lying around, but if I could sell the three cars, that would raise $9,000.  Ha! I can dream.

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Scotty from Marketing and Porter from the Department of Jackboots and Laying Down the Law are trying to put on a nice face and say they really, really are genuine in wanting a new deal in industrial relations. Ha ha ha ha ha.

Sally McManus, that excellent leader of the union movement, is saying she’ll come to the table, but when she said one condition must be that no worker is worse off, Morrison and Porter refused to give that guarantee. What a great way to start negotiations.

Do not trust! This is the party that tried to bring in Work Choices in 2011 and until last week was trying to bring in a new law that would outlaw a union for even simple breaches of regulations, like failing to submit a form on time. Draconian! Yet now they want us to believe they are nice people and we can trust them.

Not on your life. I’ve seen first hand the way employers will screw you as soon as look at you. I tried to do the right thing in 1996 and I was shafted by the employer group. I’ll never forget, at one meeting we were discussing where people should be placed on a new pay scale. We (the union and ACTU group) pointed out that it would involve pushing people down below where they were being paid at their present gradings. One employer group guy said, “Wish we could get ’em all down there.” It was shocking and demonstrated that they cared nothing for employees. He wasn’t aware of what he’d said. All they cared about was suppressing unions and employees.

No trust!

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What is it with women with rings through their noses?! I’m noticing time after time after time, women have small rings through their nostril on the side of their nose. What is this? Why this compulsion? I don’t find it at all attractive, in fact it makes me look away.

Then there are the tongue studs. How can women do this???  Do they understand that it’s meant for stimulation of the male while sucking his cock? It means that they are advertising that they suck cocks! Many times I’ve been so tempted to say, “Oh, you suck cocks, do you?” It’s only that I’m too polite that stops me.

I find it revolting. I do not want to look at any face, female or not, that has these disfiguring things stuck through their flesh. Ugh!